Prof. dr. László Károly Marácz (1960, Utrecht) was born and raised in a Hungarian family in the Netherlands. He studied general linguistics and Hungarian language and literature at the University of Groningen. In 1989, he defended his PhD dissertation at the same university. The topic of his thesis was a generative analysis of asymmetric and symmetric configurations in Hungarian syntax.

Between 1990-1991 he was a visiting scientist at MIT in Boston funded by the Dutch scientific foundation ‘Niels Stensen Stichting’. From 1992 he is affiliated to the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Amsterdam. Today he is Senior Lecturer in the European Studies Department. On March 27, 2015, he was awarded the title of "honorary professor of the Gumilyov Eurasian National University".

His basic interest is in the field of humanities but he is keen to team up in the intersection of different disciplines, including science (see Academia.edu). Marácz is one of the two initiators of the MIME-consortium that has won the 2012 FP7 Call on Multilingualism (see MIME).

Order a free PDF copy of the MIME Vademecum 'Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe', a collection of 72 questions on multilingualism on www.mime-project.org/vademecum.

“The most precious treasure my parents gave me was the Hungarian
language”

“The proliferation of multilingualism and multilingual
communication will have the effect of a velvet world revolution. This revolution
can afford to abstract away from power completely: it will start in the self,
the multilingual brain”

“In the near future the scientific breakthroughs will be
realized on the intersection and overlap of disciplines”

Knowledge

I consider scientific research as one of the most important venues in order
to gain deeper insight into knowledge. A fruitful strategy is to investigate how
earlier scholars, especially polymaths have approached this issue in relation to
language, languages and linguistics. The study of languages and their structures
is the diamond of humanities. It has been argued that a deep study of language
patterns and structures provides introspection into the mind where knowledge is
“made” and stored.

There are a number of research projects I am working on that fit into this
paradigm, including the linguistic works of Georgius Kalmár (17267-1781) who
designed a priori perfect philosophical languages; the Hungarian root dictionary
of Gergely Czuczor (1800-1866) and János Fogarasi (1801-1878) who laid bare the
root, recursive, and organic patterns and structures in the Hungarian
vocabulary; and the projects of the Transylvanian giants, father and son Farkas
(1775-1856) and János Bolyai (1802-1860) who were real polymaths and reached the
highest possible articulation of analysis and synthesis in science but built
bridges to the humanities as well. The latter has been neglected for no reasons
at all.

It is precisely the switching between science and humanities that is
fascinating in the projects of the Bolyais. If we want to understand more about
the universal character of knowledge we must go deep into the study of these
back-and-forth conversions and transformations.

Multiculturalism and Multilingualism

I am myself a bilingual native speaker of Dutch and Hungarian. I consider bi- and multilingual linguistic studies in the first place an introspection into my own mind (or if you want into my own head). I am fascinated by the ongoing automatic switch (but not code-switching or -mixing not even languaging that I have been (self-)trained to avoid) between different languages - and I really think Dutch and Hungarian are “different” that is what my intensive generative studies of these languages learned me - in one-and-the same mind. What is the “machine and spiritual code” that makes this switching between languages possible in my head?

But not less relevant than the neuropsychological perspective is of course the perspective onto the social and cognitive world of multilingual speakers. This has a number of political, social, educational and communicative aspects relevant to study. It turns out that multilingualism is the key to understand a number of political and social aspects of today’s world and moreover it touches upon all the missed opportunities to improve the quality of life. The discipline to make this quantum leap true is language policy, i.e. making people aware of the enormous advantages of multilingualism and multilingual communication and to stimulate people to become bi- tri-, etc. lingual.

Historical Linguistics

One of the most important scientific results of nineteenth century are the reconstruction of language families and the idea that the convergences between the languages in such families can be represented in a binary branching tree-diagram. Note that there is a clear connection with the Darwinian program. You only need to substitute languages for species. These results of 19th centuries humanities have been challenged from the beginning of the twentieth century. Although there are strong arguments to be critical about the “German” achievements of the 19th century mainstream linguists and especially public discourse (popular textbooks, and so on) take these outcomes for granted.

In my historical studies of the Hungarian language it is clear that Hungarian has relatively little to do with Finnish and that it has relatively more to do with Turkic but these language are not the same. The Uralic/Finno-Ugric classification of Hungarian misses a number of generalizations. So, digging into the driving forces of these classifications, i.e. the history of historical language classification is actually an interface between politics and taxonomic manipulation of languages. The patterns come together in the concept of Eurocentrism that leads us into the world of images and stereotypes.

Globalization

Processes of globalization have a large impact on the course of the world and
simultaneously on everyday life. They affect political, social and economic
realities. Every project spelled out in this profile, i.e. knowledge,
stereotypes, geopolitics, multilingualism, and so on can and must studied
against the backdrop of globalization. Highly relevant for political
globalization – and it has my attention - is the issue of security that is
clearly connected to geopolitical questions. Geopolitical analysis and
globalization go hand-in-hand. We may refer to it as “hybrid” geopolitics.

As researchers in humanities we cannot avoid to study culture and language
against the backdrop of globalization processes that has intensified in the
modern times but were present before. The most important research questions for
me are: can we distinguish patterns in languages and cultures affected by
globalization? How did globalization affect the languages and cultures in
historical entities, like the Habsburg Empire?

Geopolitics

International relations (between states) and politics is about the struggle
for influences and the realization of self-interests. If it is related to space
- especially János Bolyai would have liked this - we talk about geopolitics.
Geopolitics has not changed by globalization: it has become hybrid. In modern
times a layer of norms and values guarded by supranational and international
organizations is on the top of the world system of states. Geopolitics is now
about the relation between the political forces on the ‘global’ marco-level and
the ‘local’ meso- and micro-levels, like ethnicity or majority/minority
relations. An insightful geopolitical analysis places power structures in the
middle of this spatial tension between ‘macro’ on the one hand and ‘meso’ and
‘micro’ on the other hand.

2016

Csata, Z., & Marácz, L. K. (2016). Prospects on Hungarian as a Regional Official Language and Szeklerland's Territorial Autonomy in Romania. International Journal on Minority and Group Rights, 23(4), 530-559. [details]

Marácz, L. (2016). The roots of Modern Hungarian Nationalism: A Case Study and a Research Agenda. In L. Jensen (Ed.), The roots of nationalism: national identity formation in early modern Europe, 1600-1815 (pp. 235-250). (Heritage and Memory Studies). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. [details]

Marácz, L. (2014). Introducing a new Book on the Ural-Altaic Language Classification (Towards Eurasian Linguistic Isoglosses: the Case of Turkic and Hungarian). Altaistics and Turkology, 2014(3-4), 6-27. [details]

Marácz, L. (2011). European tools of conflict management in Central and Eastern European states with Hungarian minorities. It Beaken : meidielingen fan de Fryske Akademy, 73(3/4), 129-146. [details]

Marácz, L. (2011). Language policies in Central and East European states with Hungarian minorities: implications for linguistic rights protection of national minorities in the EU. In I. Horváth, & M. Tonk (Eds.), Minority politics within the Europe of Regions (pp. 155-183). Cluj-Napoca: Scientia [etc.]. [details]

2008

Marácz, L. (2008). Some consequences for the Union’s common foreign and security policy of the EU-enlargement with the former Soviet bloc countries. Kommunikáció, Média, Gazdaság, 6(1), 14-33. [details]

Marácz, L. (2009). Will Hungarian become a lingua franca in the Carpathian Basin? In B. Bodo, & M. Tonk (Eds.), Nations and national minorities in the European Union (pp. 117-141). Cluj Napoca: Scientia. [details]

Maracz, L. K. (2007). 'The position of the Hungarian Language in Central Europe'. In Language, Discourse and Identity in Central Europe Southampton: Centre for Transnational Studies, University of Southampton. [details]

Marácz, L. (2016). Language policy and political economy: English in a global context [Review of: T. Ricento (2015) Language policy and political economy: English in a global context]. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 37(6), 650-651. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2016.1173877[details]

Marácz, L. (keynote speaker) & Csata, Z. (keynote speaker) (12-10-2017). Bilingualism in Romania: Does the knowledge of Hungarian has an economic payoff?, International Colloquium on Language Skills for Economic and Social Inclusion, Berlin, Germany.

Marácz, L. (speaker) & Csata, Z. (speaker) (12-10-2017). Bilingualism in Romania: Does the knowledge of Hungarian has an economic payoff?, International Colloquium on Language Skills for Economic and Social Inclusion, Berlin, Germany.

Marácz, L. (speaker) (13-6-2017). The Politics of Mobility and Inclusion in a linguistically diverse Europe, The 11th International Symposium on Bilingualism, Limerick, Ireland.

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